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Old 25th May 2012, 1:46 pm   #1
TuningIndicator
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Angry This forum

You know what; I really think that if the owner and moderators find it that much hassle running a forum; that they feel they must make it their life's work, then they should just close the forum and be done with it.
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Old 25th May 2012, 2:52 pm   #2
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Default Re: This forum

I am grateful to Paul and his team for providing this service.

There are odd details of policy with which I don't agree but am not in a position to know the full story of why things are thus so don't complain.

We knew what the rules were when we joined and nobody is forced to use this, or any other, Forum.

Joe
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Old 25th May 2012, 4:07 pm   #3
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I have to say I'm with you Joe. I have no responsibilities (legal, financial, operational etc) for this 'place' and I pay nothing for the privilege of coming here. I contribute when I can, but only if I feel like it. I'm put under no pressure whatsoever to do so. In return for the absolutely zero demands made on me I expect to have no rights except, of course, for the right to take myself elsewhere if I choose to. Couldn't be simpler could it ?

Cheers,

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Old 25th May 2012, 4:19 pm   #4
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Josef,
I have exactly the same thoughts as you. The owner and moderators obviously do not find it too much hassle as the Forum is still here. I see myself as their invited guest and hope I can act accordingly.
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Old 25th May 2012, 4:27 pm   #5
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I dont know why people complain about internet forums.
If anyone doesnt like a specific one, then they can leave and find somewhere more to their taste.

Each has its rules, and no doubt all have some members who dont like some of the rules. Again, the solution is simple.

As a moderator on a couple of boards, I can state that it is a thankless task, and one where it is impossible to please everyone all of the time.
Most moderators do their best, but if anyone doesnt feel that is good enough, then, again, they can seek alternatives they do like.
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Old 25th May 2012, 4:39 pm   #6
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The situation is that the forum has become a victim of its own success. It is now so large and busy that it has outgrown the current hosting, which I get for free on the same server as my main client's eCommerce websites. It is now affecting the performance of the eCommerce websites and the whole server.

My main client, understandably, wants something done about it. So do I because the success of those eCommerce websites directly affects my income. They are higher priority to me than this forum.

The recent tweaks etc have been an attempt to lighten the load a bit, to buy us some time...

The obvious solution is to move the forum to different hosting, but that of course costs money. I have looked at the T&C's of several companies offering "unlimited" bandwidth and webspace and in practice they will not be suitable. Hosting to handle this forum properly is likely to cost several hundred pounds per year. I don't have that sort of money to spend on it.

As I see it, there are four options:
  1. Close it.

  2. Try to seek a sponsor or a new owner to fund it and make it theirs. The obvious choice is the BVWS, and I have emailed Mike Barker to see whether he feels it is something the BVWS may want to consider. Obviously there would need to be committee discussions that I (due to conflict of interests) cannot be involved with. They would need to consider how to make it a member benefit while keeping at least some parts open to all, how the current rules fit with the BVWS membership conditions, how complaints to the BVWS about aspects of the forum are addressed, whether some aspects of the forum are at odds with the aims of the BVWS etc.... There is currently no news on this option, but I only sent the email yesterday.

  3. Charge some sort of membership fee for the use of the forum, or some parts/features of it. I do not know how this could work, what extras would need to be offered to encourage people to pay, how much per year would be considered reasonable etc. There would also be the issue that those who have paid may feel they are entitled to special treatment with regard to rule violations, warnings and bans etc., which opens up a huge can of worms.

  4. Seek advertising (banner adverts etc). We could only attract a limited range of advertisers, they probably wouldn't want to pay much, members probably wouldn't click the adverts.... I am not convinced this could work.
It is not possible for it to continue running as it is for the reasons outlined above.

There is currently no set deadline date for something to happen, it is really down to when my main client run out of patience. I'm thinking we have about a month or so.

I welcome constructive comments and suggestions on these and other options.
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Last edited by Paul Stenning; 25th May 2012 at 4:45 pm. Reason: Tidied the numbered list
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Old 25th May 2012, 4:53 pm   #7
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Thank you for the explanation, Paul.

I have a limited understanding of how such things work but if the data-base is getting too big the obvious thing is to chop it down to size.

It seems to me that it's better to sacrifice some content than to loose the lot and there must be a lot of duplication of information and stuff of little worth. Sorting it out would be a huge undertaking though.

- Joe
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Old 25th May 2012, 4:56 pm   #8
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Default Re: This forum

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Stenning View Post
The situation is that the forum has become a victim of its own success. It is now so large and busy that it has outgrown the current hosting... It is now affecting the performance of the eCommerce websites and the whole server...
I was wondering if this was the situation. Thanks for the info Paul.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Stenning View Post
Charge some sort of membership fee for the use of the forum ... There would also be the issue that those who have paid may feel they are entitled to special treatment... which opens up a huge can of worms...
I'd be happy to pay £10 annually, and wave goodbye if there are any diasgreements. But I can see that making it commercial does alter the whole thing immensely.

Of course, making it an annual fee job, would almost certainly reduce the amount of posts vastly, which may leave you with a pot of money and the problem gone anyway.

Rather than making it part of the BVWS is it possible that BVWS may consider recognising this Forum as affiliated to it - in such a way that members need a BVWS membership to log in and post, but the BVWS is not directly responsible for the Form workings? I'm thinking that my classic bike insurance asks me to be a member of an appropriate club, even though the insurance company and the club are separate entities.
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Old 25th May 2012, 5:02 pm   #9
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Apologies if it's been tried already, but might something as simple as a PayPal "tip jar" be enough here? "Several hundred pounds a year" is maybe the equivalent of an hour's work a week for most of us: it would seem extraordinary to me if the goodwill generated by a forum of this size, just by its usefulness in assisting the exchange of information and sometimes of physical artefacts, weren't enough to bring in an amount of those proportions from anonymous donations alone. A fiver a year - ten pence a week, for crying out loud! - from a fair proportion of regular users, and the occasional pound or two from stray individuals thankful for services the forum renders them... problem solved, perhaps? Keep it anonymous and voluntary, maybe with an ongoing visible record of the sum raised, and the issue of paying members possibly expecting more slack to be cut them couldn't arise...

Paul
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Old 25th May 2012, 5:06 pm   #10
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Good idea, Paul_RK. It would be a good way to show appreciation for benefit we've received and excess equipment could be sold and the proceeds donated too.

- Joe
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Old 25th May 2012, 5:18 pm   #11
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Default Re: This forum

Paul Stenning said in another thread https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...551#post532551 that I started:

Quote:
I have posted an explaination of the current situation in post #6 here https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/s...ad.php?t=84067

It would probably be easier if further discussions were in that thread to keep everything in one place. For that reason only, I'm closing this thread.
With reference to the above and Paul's post #6 in this thread I am grateful for the explanation of the immediate problem. It seems that we might now be able to have a rational discussion of the issues without, for example, the deletion of a thread that I started recently which raised similar points though it went further in some areas. I should emphasise that deleted thread was neither casual nor trivial. Paul might care to re-instate it, if only to add to the discussion here.

There has been a lot of disquiet, much of which is not publicly visible here nor elsewhere. What you can see from the OP in this thread and in some previous ones is the tip of an iceberg.

I would, perhaps controverisally, that add that my primary concern is not for the survival of UKVRR but for the accumulated knowledge here which needs to survive any decisions or changes that are made. The recent pruning of the forum by some 1000s of posts (possibly over 10000) means that we have no idea what might have been lost.

Further to my manifesto, I would suggest that UKVRR has grown to the point where its governance needs to be examined. Paul has recognised this in post #6. Ownership by the BVWS is one route though there are problems to ironed out regarding members and non-members. I am sure that these can be sorted out with a bit of goodwill and generosity of spirit. My own first take on this is that the BVWS can well afford the costs of running a forum like this on the basis that it is freely open to everyone. Perhaps not quite de minimis for the BVWS but not far from it. Another model is the foundation approach that I think is used by Rmorg. I don't know if that is feasible in the UK.

My overall point here is that the technical issues of hosting and to a lesser extent of funding can be readily solved. What is needed is a recognition that UKVRR is the sum of all its parts, perhaps even more than that. That a major part is the sum of all the contributions made by members which should not be able to be casually taken away.

Anyway, I've gone on a bit here so I'll just put in a final plea that we contribute to this thread in a constructive way, avoiding the acrimony that has sometimes plagued threads that have touched on governance.

Last edited by ppppenguin; 25th May 2012 at 5:31 pm. Reason: Mainly for clarity
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Old 25th May 2012, 5:45 pm   #12
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Ah, OK. The other internet forum of which I'm a member went through this a couple of years ago. They solved the problem without changing the management thus:

a) they persuaded enough of the members to make a voluntary donation of ~10p a week (in fact £10 for 2 years). In return they were promised, very clearly, ABSOLUTELY NO INFLUENCE WHATSOEVER over the way the forum was run, NO SPECIAL TREATMENT vis a vis the rules and NO REFUND on the £10 if you flounced out. But you did get access to the equivalent of our 'Sets and Parts Offered' forum which was closed to the general public,

b) members who were 'in the business' were charged a larger fee (50p a week I think),

c) members who felt they wanted to support the forum with larger payments because they valued it sufficiently and they could afford to do so were allowed to (with open arms !). They still got no extra benefits though.

It seems that our books might be balanced if we could get, say, 60 people to donate £5 per year (£300 per year total), 4 'in the business' donors at £25 per year (£100 total), and 6-8 philanthropists paying £10-20 per year (say £100 total).

Would that cover it, perhaps with a little coming in from Service Data sales ?

There were three big advantages of this approach. Firstly it didn't generate the disagreements or the procedural baggage that any element of democracy or government-by-committee inevitably seems to bring. Believe me, no matter who's in charge there will always be a group of people who don't like the way they do things. Secondly it didn't exclude all those people whose contributions may be small in number (so small that they wouldn't sign up for a paid membership) but were priceless in individual worth, because they had very particular expertise. Thirdly because people could join the forum for free they were able to discover just what a valuable and interesting place it was and in a little while they were happy to join the 10p per week brigade.

Just my two penn'orth of course,

Cheers,

GJ
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Old 25th May 2012, 5:54 pm   #13
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Well, I for one would not object to paying a small annual fee for the use of the Forum. Someone has to pay for it: either you pay to look at stuff (subscription), or someone else pays for their stuff to be looked at (advertising). And I definitely prefer the BBC to Facebook .....
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Old 25th May 2012, 6:02 pm   #14
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The structure outlined above by GJ sounds a very sensible way forward. I'd be amazed if the members of this forum couldn't, or wouldn't, provide this kind of support. Poll the membership. Make it anonymous and ask a simple question ... 'would you be prepared to make a contribution towards the running costs of this forum?'

My guess is there would be overwhelming agreement and support.

Colin
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Old 25th May 2012, 6:04 pm   #15
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Oh, I forgot to mention that on my 'other forum' paying members got a small acknowledgement in the form of the freedom to write whatever they liked (within the bounds of decency and the law) below their ID, where it now says Diode, Triode etc here. Administrator and Moderator were quickly removed from the allowed list. Banned was strangely popular ...

Cheers,

GJ
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Old 25th May 2012, 6:13 pm   #16
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I have no objection to paying for a service such as this forum which I value.

However we must not forget some may may be on a tight budget.

We all got used to pretty much everything on the web being free, well in truth of course, someone is paying for it.

I don't want adverts and banners eating my bandwith and generally being annoying.

If it keeps this valuable resource I'm with GJ

Cheers

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Old 25th May 2012, 6:16 pm   #17
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As a new second-time member I would be happy to pay £10 per year actually...
let's see.. that's 40 fags or 3 pints if you are lucky...
The value of this Forum and it's accumulated knowledge needs to be kept in proportion,
i.e Invalueable.

John.
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Old 25th May 2012, 6:24 pm   #18
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GJ's proposed model looks feasible. It may or may not be the best for UKVRR. It would be useful to know the approximate annual operating cost of UKVRR. If it's sub £500 I would say that it would be close to de minimis for the BVWS to carry. It should also be pretty easy to raise by subscriptions or donations.

Looking at VideoKarma, a US based TV forum, that seems to work on donations. The other UK based vintage radio forums (VRAT and GVR) are still quite small and I beielve are basically funded by their owners.

This raises the point that there is of course space for more than one UK forum, each with its own character. Let the market decide their success or failure. What I (and I hope most of you) don't wish to see is warfare.

Nobody who has had the experience should have said that moderating a forum is easy. It may well be that size is important here - I don't really know from direct experience. This brings me to the controversial subject of rules. That great airman, Douglas Bader said: “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” I'm sure that there's a law that says the more complex and detailed the laws, the fatter grow the lawyers. And more work involved in their policing. A good friend of mine went to a school in the 1970s, outwardly conventional but with a minimal rulebook. I don't recall the details but it was largely along the lines of "behave sensibly and there won't be any problems". This gave a lot of scope for the pupils to act responsibly and guided towards that path while also giving maximum flexibility in dealing with problems.
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Old 25th May 2012, 6:31 pm   #19
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Roughly, how much would it cost?

Maybe an annual request for donations, until the costs were met, would be simplest way to go.

Regards
David
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Old 25th May 2012, 6:50 pm   #20
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I'd be happy to pay £10 a year.
Andy
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